Premium

Glad to announce, new scratch made project is underway. Chang International Circuit, also known as Buriram International Circuit because of alcohol restrictions, is a motorsport race track built by well known track designer Mr. Hermann Tilke. It is located near city Buri Ram, Thailand. The circuit was opened in 2014. This is the first FIA Grade 1 and FIM Grade A circuit. The track's primary corporate sponsor is Chang Beer, named the track as part of the sponsorship. It is 4.554 km (2.830 mi) long with 12 turns. It's mostly flat with cca 10 meters of elevation.

I was really having a hard time to find any data, mostly about elevation changes, but I got everything eventually. So now let`s roll up the sleeves and let`s get to work.

1st shot of the track layout (elevation changes are now in progress, but mainly done, still some fine tuning needed):
So how long to wait? Hmm, we`ll see. It surely should be way faster than Okayama, which was my 1st ever scratch made track, and located in the middle of the woods, which took me really long to model it. Chang is on some mostly flat terrain with nothing much around. But the layout of the track is interesting anyway. It offers close and intense racing.
Latest pic of the track from my design:

Let's drive side by side!Premium

A) Cool to see you working on another track. B) Bit surprised you chose this track but I guess that's mainly because I dislike the conversion of the track that's out there, soooooo flat C) Did you make up your mind how you wanna tackle track cuts and running wide without gaining an advantage?

I do like the orange barriers on the inside here (although they kind of mess up the otherwise super-flat scenery :

But actually I'm more interested in the "going wide" problem with many corners on this track

Let's drive side by side!Premium

Premium

I know what you mean. It's almost impossible to please everyone, regarding penalties on corners cutting and taking advantages with that. So by default, do you mean will be better to use white line as track limit, no matter of the nature of the circuit which uses a lot of "off track" areas in RL?
And about those yellow curbs, I think I haven't noticed any of it ij any 2017 races, as I recall they were only used 2015 and maybe 2016, or just last year. But they surely will mix things up and make all more interesting. Do you think they have to be included?
Yellow curbs on inside of right hander:

Let's drive side by side!Premium

Well, I know you'd prefer to model the track as close to reality as possible.
And in principle I admire that.

However, we have all seen the move by Max Verstappen in Texas a couple of weeks ago and we have all followed the controversial discussions that arose from that.

And all of that was possible because the track has super awkward run-offs and flat curbs.

So what I take away from this incident, where not even the entire world could agree on something, is that in sim racing without a proper LIVE race control, we should always make sure that such situations cannot even occur in the first place.

In fact, just this week I find myself in a similar situation where track limits are crucial. In a small Ginetta series this week we are racing Brun's excellent version of Donington Park GP which he modelled to perfect realism at that time. This however means that in the chicane there are no sausage curbs or anything else that would prevent hardcore cutting (unless you use the silly and dangeroud penalty system that AC provides).

Anyhow, long story short, my take on all of this is still the same as it was when we had the open talk in the Okayama thread a few weeks ago and I know you don't agree.

Inside cutting: if there is a possibility to cut the inside of a corner because of a flat and grippy surface outside the white lines, then there should be some sort of obstacle to prevent this. Whether that's done via those ugly barriers shown in the video or some small sausage kerbs is up to you.

Running wide at corner exit: imho this is crucial in flat tracks with lots of asphalt run-offs outside the white lines. I understand it's important for you to keep the track realistic, so if it were up to me I would probably go with either of these options:

Create curbs that are shaped like a wedge. Meaning that the outside of the curb is significantly higher and thus has a big of a sharp drop-off.

A couple of years ago they had some really awkward "plate" / "dish" shaped curbs at the Hockenheimring at the outside of the hairpin to prevent drivers from going wide. They were kind of dangerous cos they caused cars to actually jump and stuff but they did their job quite well.

Premium

Some update for last couple of todays. Track mesh with real elevations and inclinations is complete, together with connecting roads for different layouts. Quite tricky all these, because there is so little elevation but on the other hand, track is constantly in some inclinations, up, down, left or right, there is almost no true flat parts. I really had to be very precise, to get it all right, but I am very glad with the final outcome. Did 100 laps for sure to test layout.

Premium

I'm guessing it's because it's one of the circuits used in Super GT, like Okayama.

Click to expand...

No, it has nothing to do with that. It`s just a random pick, which I like, and there is no any decent version yet, and I would say that even R3R`s version is not an accurate representation of real track in complete, even, as far as I heard, mr. Tilke the track designer gave them all the papers needed.

Edit: just an example of real pic and R3R (quite big bump 50m up the hill in RL, lamps, main grand stand, fence on both sides, curbs,...).